The Crusades - Stories of Real Adventures: Tasmania

Port Arthur historic site, the devils kitchen, the Tasman arch , the blow hole, the dog line and the historic coal mine site

Today we headed back to Port Arthur to see some of the things we missed the day before. First destination the church, we walked through the gorgeous garden that is a replica of the original gardens that would have existed during the settlement time. The church was really lovely and it just had a really peaceful feel.

The church from the gardens

On the inside of the church looking out

The parsonage, this lovely looking building is apparently considered to be one of the 5^th most haunted sites in Australia. We entered this house during the ghost tour, and returned the next day to see it in the daylight, I love how well tended the buildings and gardens are.

The parsonage

Some of the buildings were wonderfully decorated to show hoe the house would have been furnished in it’s hey day

The bedroom

After we finished buying out the gift shop, we hit the road again. We headed to the coast.

This was not the order we seen these in but I want to show you them in this order for a reason

The blowhole

The Tasman arch

The devil’s kitchen

Unfortunately when we visited these sites we arrived at the wrong time tide wise otherwise each of them would have been much more spectacular.

So from reading the information at the sites each of these natural occurrences are related at some time the Devil’s Kitchen would have started at a blow hole, the constant water churning through the blowhole would eventually wear the rock away creating the huge cavity like the Tasman Arch. Eventually however the power of the sea would have continued to wear away at the arch and the roof would have collapsed creating the devils kitchen. Unfortunately I was unable to get a good shot of just how much the water was churning around in that Kitchen.

The dog line

When looking on the map it is clear that the Tasman peninsula is joined to the mainland by a thin stretch of land called Eaglehawk neck. This meant that the only way a convict could escape was by sea or by crossing this neck. So to ensure that crossing the neck was difficult, there were 18 dogs chained across the neck, some of these dogs were actually on raised platforms over the water, to ensure that the dogs were vicious at no time was any man or other dog allowed to associate with the dogs. The dogs received the same size meal of an average convict and just in case the dogs missed the convict, the guards encouraged sharks into the waters by providing the occasional meal for them.

If the convicts didn’t comply with the rules of Port Arthur they were often sent to the Coal Mine site, as the worst punishment this site is a good 30-45 min drive (by car) from the port Arthur site, but well worth the drive. The coalmines were Australia’s first operational coal mine site. During it’s peak this site had around 500 convicts and their guards and their families living on the site.